Nobel House陽城酒家@ Jalan Delima

Choosing the restaurant and menu for the Chinese new year eve dinner has always been a stressful responsibility and to add on to the stress, I had been preoccupied and the event was only 1 month away, which started a flurry of frantic calls to restaurants only to find that they were full liao.. oh oh. More panicking , and after more frantic calls, managed to reserve a table at Nobel Banquet.

Nobel Banquet is a specialist venue for banquets and the menu is serviced by the kitchen of the Nobel house. They are part of the Oriental group of restaurants , read more about it here

Ok, venue was set and then it was time to choose the dishes. Studied the various ‘gourmet celebration set’ prepared by the restaurant, held discussions with family members, many discussions with the restaurant (Vincent – have been very helpful and patient) and finally everyone was happy with the menu. Yayyy

On that day , we arrived at the banquet hall at about 7:30pm , some patrons were tucking into their meals, some tables were yet to be filled.

First up was Mumsie’s special request : Mini Buddha Jump over the wall = which meant that everyone had their individual bowl of this lavish soup. With the big brothers abalone, sharkfin, fish maw, dried scallops, chicken etc in the soup, how will it be possible for the soup not to taste good ? The soup was yumyum yummy..a bountiful start for the year of the dragon. It was a big bowl of soup and frankly, I was almost half full after I finished the soup, I better pace myself if I were to last the eight course meal.

After the yau mak, we were presented with a large platter of the grilled pork. Wrapped the ribs with the above yau mak and Voila ! The freshness and the crunchiness of the yau mak drenched in lemon juice complimented the taste of the ribs. The ribs was grilled just right, leaving the meat juicy and tender. This was good. I was very pleased that we cleaned up the whole plate of ribs.

Broccoli with scallops- predominantly lead by the broccoli but there were some mushroom and carrots as well, this was pretty ok, only complain was that the scallops were a bit thin. My little nephew was ‘forced’ to take a minimum of two pieces of brocolli to fulfill his ‘green vege’ quota , after a lot of whining and a bit of a bargaining, one big piece and a tinier piece were placed on his plate

By this time, our stomach were beginning to reach it’s full capacity, and everyone expressed regrets that we might have ate too much pineapple tarts, kuih bangkit, egg rolls, fried lotus roots, not to mention the nasi dagang and nasi lauk that came all way from Kelate, before the meal..

Next up : Crispy skin chicken – the chicken was buried under a sea of keropok. The meat was soft with a slight tinge of saltiness and the skin was crispy. Not bad, but due to the condition of our ‘tank’ there weren’t too much activity over the chicken. The keropok seemed to be more popular. I sincerely apologize to the chef for not giving enough attention to the chicken.

Steamed deep sea garoupa with fresh beancurd skin – we were so full that when this got to our table, it seemed like an ordeal to pick up our chopsticks and get a taste of this. This is the first time I am eating deep sea garoupa, the skin was very thick and the meat was solid. The overall taste of this dish was rather nice, the gravy having been enriched by the flavour of the beancurd. The beancurd skin was soft and delicious.

Village style Braised egg noodle, the presentation of this dish was very bland, the noodles, the meat and whatever they have in the dish was all with the same brownish tone. The only colour to this dish was the few strands of choy sum. I dunno la..maybe village style, like that one ? Taste wise: nothing great, the gravy had a funny taste to it which I do not fancy.

Deep fried ‘Nin Kou’ – the nin kou were sandwiched between sweet potatoes and deep fried. The nin kou wasn’t overly sweet which was a good thing, but I would prefer it if the nin kao was more prominent = now they seemed over shadowed by the sweet potatoes.

Overall, a good meal. The bill, plus some soft drinks came to ~ RM2,650